The Format #013

It’s November already, and it really has been a whirlwind of a year, for us and for the tech industry at large. Even though the rain has hit, and the days are shorter, the momentum is showing no sign of stopping.

Here are some of the more interesting updates and articles we’ve found this week…

Web3 and the Future of Loyalty

Loyalty drives profit. It improves retention, referrals, growth and the brand as a whole. This is not a crazy revelation- loyalty programmes have been around in some shape or form since the 1800’s. The real question is how will Web3 evolve loyalty? This deep dive looks at the benefits of ownership, portability, personalisation and transferability. 🙌

What Makes Roblox Special

In our opinion Roblox is becoming the Instagram or Facebook of Gen Alpha. 66M users average 156 minutes playing it every single day- it’s social and cultural influence cannot be overstated. Whilst its clunky avatars and janky interface are far from perfect, platforms like this are shaping a generation of social gamers. This in-depth report is basically a Roblox 101, the only way to dive deeper is by playing it…

Virtual Stores Drive Sales for 88% of Retailers

The competition in the online retail space is fierce. In an attempt to win the diminishing attention of consumers and connect with shoppers in a meaningful way, many brands in the e-commerce industry are trialling and investing in immersive experiences, with each planning to spend an average of $234K+ on related technologies. We’re especially interested in the gamification of shopping experiences that are discussed in this article.

Mastercard partners with crypto payment firm MoonPay for Web3 services

We’re excited about this one because it is all about experimentation, with the goal of exploring how Web3 tools can improve experiential marketing and connect consumers. It’s great to see established companies look at Web3 with the goal of innovating their business model.

Boston Dynamics Adds ChatGPT To Its Robot

Robot dogs are threatening the jobs of sarcastic British tour guides in bowler hats… Boston Dynamics have taken Spot, their iconic robot dog and by linking it with Eleven Labs voice models, ChatGPT’s API and a model for captioning images from Spot’s ‘eyes’, they’ve created a walking, talking and somewhat coherent robot dog. 🤖🐶

OPENFORMAT News:

Sneak Peak - Early Access

Mark got a little bit excited and ‘leaked’ a video giving a sneak peak into our Early Access developer toolkit. Internal testing and bug fixing kicked off in Bristol on Tuesday and our leaderboard is getting very competitive, Sarah got VERY emotionally invested and is chasing Andy for the top spot. Invite only access is coming soon.

Simple Faucets

Gas fees are a real blocker for developers getting started in Web3 so we’ve built a tool to fix that. Check out the demo video below or try it for yourself:

Case Study: Daft Springer

Daft Springer used OPENFORMAT’s toolkit to build a platform allowing artists to quickly release music tracks as digital collectibles, with the revenue-sharing contract and royalties being immutably stored as part of the music’s release.

And that’s all for this week.

Have a great weekend, Dan and the OPENFORMAT team 👋🏽

Prompt (Generated using Dalle-3): “Photo of a hyper-realistic Boston Dynamics Spot Robot dog resembling a real dog in appearance, but with metallic and technological components. It is positioned in a high-tech lab environment. The robot has a state-of-the-art speaker system on its back with sound waves emanating from it, indicating it's speaking. Screens in the background display ChatGPT's logo and interface.”